Awards Daily

Kathryn Bigelow is a torture apologist, Leni Reifenstahl and according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter, not the one who really directed Zero Dark Thirty and now, the other really great female director, Lynne Ramsay, is “hysterical,” having had a “hissy fit” on the set of the Natalie Portman movie, Jane Got a Gun.  Maybe we can figure out a way to verbally stone enough of them to make sure another strong woman never emerges in Hollywood again.

Whatever happened there was morphed into what has become all too commonplace in the way people talk about women. Film.com’s Callum Marsh nails the chorus to the wall with his latest piece, “Lynne Ramsay, and Why We Need to Talk About How We Talk About Female Directors“:

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That wide swaths of the (overwhelmingly male) film-nerd public would flock to social media to express grossly misogynistic thoughts after the slightest opportunity presents itself is perhaps not so surprising. But what is surprising—and what’s much more disconcerting, given the circumstances—is how deeply and needlessly gendered the response to this story has been from professional journalists and news organizations. Leaving aside the somewhat unexpected shift in default editorial sympathies from the artist to her producer, the articles reporting this story have continued to lean on language tailored, at least implicitly, for gender-based condescension.

One reason I’m glad a man wrote that is because people like you always take a piece like this written by a woman with a grain of salt. Come on, admit it. You do. Yes, those of you reading this, at least some of you, will tend to dismiss it: “Oh there she goes again.” But when a male writer calls out misogyny people listen. Really listen. So cheers to Callum Marsh.[/quote_box]

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Hattie McDaniel, Denver 1910, age 15.

What is the thing that Hollywood demands most? Sincerity. No place in the world will pay such a high price for this admirable trait. We all respect sincerity in our friends and acquaintances, but Hollywood is willing to pay for it.

I was little more than a kid but I was old in show business. I won a medal in dramatic art when I was 15. One year later my oldest brother, Otis, wrote his own show and songs and persuaded my mother to let me go on the road with his company. I loved every minute of it, the tent shows, the kerosene lights, the contagious enthusiasm of the small-town crowds.

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Twitter was a-flutter with reactions from a test screening of the Meryl Streep/Julia Roberts film August: Osage County.  I never trust test screenings where Oscar is concerned because they are almost always wrong. Moreover, they can sometimes set expectations too high for a film to then meet those expectations.  I hate it when that happens.  But you can’t put the genie back in the bottle once it’s out and so August: Osage County is not quite getting the Les Mis treatment yet but it might be headed in that direction. Remember: you need critics to see a movie to know if it’s going to be a Best Picture contender at the very least. Over the years test screening reactions have almost always turned out to be misleading.

Here’s what we know before we ever even go read those: Streep brings it. She brings it in bad movies (The Iron Lady) and brings it in great movies (Adaptation) — so there isn’t likely going to be anything disappointing about Streep in this film.  Therefore, it isn’t that surprising that the early word from the screening is a sploogegasm on the order of MERYL STREEP WILL WIN HER FOURTH OSCAR. And she very well might.  Since Hollywood, and the industry, really really really doesn’t like movies with strong female leads in them, and that there are barely enough of them to go around at all, it seems plausible that Streep’s tour de force could blow out any potential competition.

But enough of my empty, pointless speculation — on to the tweets.  A reader named Daniel sent this in (I hope he doesn’t mind if I post it):

You can read some twitter reactions over at the Awards Circuit.  A reaction review after the cut.    (more…)

Jane Got A Gun was set to begin production Monday in Sante Fe, but cast and crew found out yesterday morning that Director Lynn Ramsay would no longer be directing. The $25 million western, written by Brian Duffield and said to be one of the best Black List scripts of 2011, involves an outlaw who has managed to make it back to his home in spite of being ventilated with eight bullet holes. His wife must then turn to an ex-lover to help defend them against the gang tracking the wounded man back to their farm to finish him off. The stellar cast includes Natalie Portman, Scott Steindorff, Joel Edgerton and Rodrigo Santoro. Jude Law replaced Michael Fassbender as the husband on March 11 — an eleventh-hour shakeup that now looks like a earlier sign of deeper problems.

No details about the precise nature of the creative conflict have emerged, but naturally the default mode on male-dominated comment pages I’ve seen is to find a way to finger the female ego as the unstable element at fault. Whatever the actual problems may be, the worst idle chatter today revolves around Lynne Ramsay being a woman and reckless speculation about how this mess might damage or wreck her career. Silliest overreaction of all are the baseless extrapolations that this incident could taint the perception of professionalism of women directors in general. The only reason I’m even repeating that load of crap is so when I call it a load of crap and you’ll know what I’m talking about. There’s no word yet about how Michael Fassbender’s abrupt departure from the film last week reflects badly on every male actor. We can only hope it won’t make producers skittish about hiring men to star in movies from now on.

UPDATE: Gavin O’Connor has signed on to direct. His credits include Pride and Glory, Tumbleweeds and Warrior — one of the most undervalued movies of 2011.

 
The Chlotrudis Awards are presented annually by the Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film, a Boston-area non-profit organization that teaches audiences to view films actively through discussion, formal and informal education, discourse, film festivals, special screenings and collaboration. (wiki)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ENSEMBLE CAST
Moonrise Kingdom

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Alex DiGerlando for Beasts of the Southern Wild

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Mihai Malaimare Jr. for The Master

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Stephen Chbosky for Perks of Being a Wallflower

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (TIE!)
Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola for Moonrise Kingdom and Sarah Polley for Take This Waltz

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